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Thursday, April 2, 2009

Tokyo Station Becomes Smoke-Free

I was watching on the news today how they were taking down all signs designating smoking areas at Tokyo Station. There entire station is now smoke free! And it’s about time if you want to know my opinion. Japan should finally get on with the program and do something about its ridiculously high smoking rates.

Next on the list should be restaurants – make them all smoke free. And if the salarymen want to poison themselves, they can do it outside. Hostess bars I don’t care about, so if they want to smoke in there, that’s fine by me. It’s their lung cancer, not mine.

My husband doesn’t smoke. Neither does anyone in his family. His parents quit ages ago, long before smoking was deemed bad for health. They don’t drink either, and in that respect, they must seem a bit unusual for a Japanese family.

Anyway, back to Tokyo Station. While the guys in hard hats were disassembling and removing all the smoking signs, I hope they also managed to take down this one: